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Author: Siobhan

Growing up I never had an interest in a career in the tech industry. I didn’t think that it was possible for me to have one. Whenever I thought about someone who works in tech; they were a computer genius who started building computers at the age of 7 or something else obviously inspired by a teen sci-fi movie.

I learned about coding in my last year of high school. My friend had started using Code Academy to learn HTML and CSS to learn how to build a website. I didn’t have any idea what he was talking about so I had to check it out. I quickly joined and started the lessons and loved it. Unfortunately, with balancing school and other activities I didnt finish all of the lessons.

Fast forward to my 3rd year of college as a marketing major with a music minor.I started thinking about the future od the marketing industry and the direction it was heading in. That lead me to Digital Marketing which sparked my interest in analytics and Web Design. I started thinking about incorporating data-driven strategies into marketing courses were very traditional based. I started to seek more information on my own and looking for courses outside of my school on analytics. I didn’t find any courses that I could take due to time and money constraints.

Code Academy came back to mind when I remembered that their courses were free and so I was estactic when they had a course on SQL. I started it and completed but wasn’t satisfied just there I wanted to complete the course I started in high school on building a website. So I went back to learning HTML & CSS. After spending months on that off and on due to trying to balance my school work and those courses but it became hard.

I had to realize that I wasn’t happy with marketing. I had to be honest with myself that I chose it as a major because it was a safe choice and at the time. I didn’t know what to do, I had just left high school realizing that I didn’t want to go into the law field and felt like I had to choose something. I love programming; it challenged me and intrigued. I wanted to spend my time learning more about it. Doing those lessons on Code Academy wasn’t enough. I wanted to learn more. After that semester I decided to apply to NYIT for their IT program and for the first time since I’d started college I pursuing something I was passionate about.

I decided at 9 years old that I wanted to be a veterinarian; until I realized that didn’t just consist of petting the animals. As I got older I got a strong interest in History and politics. Those interests lead me to wanting to have a career in law. Yes, even at 11 I was already thinking about law school lol. The first time that I even made a choice to pursue that passion came in my last year of middle school. I applied to go to a magnet school. A high school that has a program that gives students a head start in pursuing their future career interests.
I was so nervous that I wouldn’t be accepted into their law program. It’s very competitive and some students are even wait listed. I remember not even explaining to my mom what it was. I feel so determined that I completed the application by myself and asked my mother to sign it and fax it. I was so happy when I was accepted. I was sure that I would learn so much about law and only fall more in love with the law field.
What happened over those next 4 years was something that was a bit different. By my junior year I knew that a career in law was no longer something that I wanted to pursue. The idea of being a lawyer scared me and I was also terrified because it was the first time in my life that I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.The amount of aniexty I had was palpable. I spent my last two years of high school despressed, thinking that not only did I let myself down but my family as well.

Until I realized I always had a love of music and in school my best classes were my business and e-commerce focused classes. So when I applied to for colleges I went for a marketing major with a minor in music. But that was only the beginning I eventually changed my mind there but the point of this post is that. It’s ok to not know exactly what you want to do; sometimes the answer is right in front of you in your hobbies and interests. You’re allowed to changed your mind, the challenge of pursuing your passions isn’t a path painted gold. It can be tumtulous but it can also be very rewarding.

In May of this year, I finally had the realization that I did not have a healthy outlook on fitness and health. I am currently overweight and eat crappy most of the time but the only alternative I’ve ever known to that is crash diets and cleanses and running on a treadmill until I want to pass out. Which only left me irritated, fatigued and angry. So I would quit and the cycle would start again.

I was successful once and it lead to an unhealthy relationship with food. I would barely eat and became extremely picky with food. I lost a lot of weight but to maintain that was virtually impossible. Eventually my appetite came back and I ate everything in sight. The binging began.

So in May I started researching (Googling) healthy weight loss which lead to my obsession with Bodybuilding. I loved reading the testimonials from people who were succesful in changing their lives and bodies through fitness. The 3 things that I took away from reading those were:

Have a plan but also allow yourself to make changes as you go along.
Staring with a meal and fitness plan will give the structure to minimize the possibility of falling back into old habits. It also allow you to rule out what worls for your body as you go along. You get to find out what workouts have a better effect on your goals and the same with diet.

Stay postive and use positive reinforcement.
Too many times people use guilt and negative thinking as motivation to workout and to make healthier eating choices. Throught your health journey you will have setbacks, maybe you’ll eat too much junkfood one day or not workout for a week due to being sick. Either way it’s important to give yourself a break and just get better into your routine without thinking you have to punish yourself by trying to run 5 miles the next day. Truly, the last thing you want to do is injury yourself. You want to be in this for the long haul like an athlete, you want to be able to sustain a level of energy to get through every workout so pace yourself and when you fall off the plan just get back on slowly.

Set small and realistic goals.
For some people looking at fitness models on Instagram is great motivation but for others all it does is create a frustration. Truthfully, even though you see those fitness models at their best fitness level they werent always their and it doesn’t happen over 3 months either; it shouldn’t be about the time it should be about the journey. Sometimes with goal setting you can psych yourself out by setting goals like “look like insert (celebrity/model)” or “Go from never working out and eating mostly junk food to in one week working out 5 days a week and eating nothing but vegetables and chicken breast”. It is hard to break habits just as it is hard to set new ones but putting so much pressure on yourself to make drastic changes can be overwhelming and again staying positive is so important. So instead set goals like:

Workout for one to two days a week

Wake up an extra 5 minutes earlier tomorrow

Lift a heavier weight after 4 workouts

Incorporate a new fruit and vegetable into my meals this week

It’s the small daily goals that will add up and show progress overtime. Take photos and you’ll be able to look back and see it but again be patient, positive, and make it all enjoyable. This will be a journey for me and maybe one for you as well. Even though i’m sick and recovering right now 😞i’m still taking it day by day. I’ll keep you all posted.

I struggled with what my first post should be but I’m currently going through the process of officially no longer being a college student. Believe me this isn’t an exciting process for me nor is it a completely awful one. The only word I can use to describe it is bittersweet. Before I give my reasons for leaving, I want to give a bit of background.

My college experience/journey started in 2012, Fall 2012 to be exact. I had just graduated that summer and was accepted into the marketing program at Marymount Manhattan. I was excited to be going to NYC. I knew that I would have the opportunity to connect with like minded individuals and make great networking connections. That was an important part of my reasoning of wanting to be at Marymount Manhattan coming from South Florida. I wanted to be specifically in the marketing industry with a focus in music marketing, my dream was to work at an indie company such as Glassdoor Records.

Needless to say it was not at all what I thought it would be. I didn’t mind my major but found that the university I went to didn’t put much focus on their business majoring students. Also, I hate the campus environment and area. The upper east side made me very isolated from the NYC college student experience and was very expensive.

I left after my first semester. I was extremely stress and pretty much had a cold the whole semester and had a serious case of dehydration that led to me being hospitalized towards the end of the semester. I went back home defeated wondering what I should do. I felt uninspired and depressed.

You’re probably wondering how I got to being interested in Web development. I’ll get there I promise but what I learned from that experience is that I needed to think through the choice of school much better why the location is great. I needed to pay more attention to where the school places its focus and in this case it was on the arts.

Welcome to my Blog! I’m new at this but I wanted to create a space for me to share with the world my journey persuing a career path in Web development and also just share a bit of my other journey’s. This blog will mainly be about my experience learning programming languages and my interest in the tech industry. I will also blog about more personal things that I have interests in like music and health and fitness.

My reason for creating this blog is because I, as a woman of color first and foremost who is interested in Tech have found that I never found a blog that spoke to me. I do have an interest in many things besides tech but I wanted place where all of my interests come together.